Clay

Posts by Clay

A career in nursing doesn’t always mean walking around a hospital in pastel-colored scrubs. There are many different types of nursing in many different environments. Here is a quick list of different types of nursing careers to help you choose what kind of nurse you want to be.

Agency, or Travel nursing: Nurses register with an agency, tell the agency when they are available to work, and the agency hires them out to work shifts in a number of healthcare settings. It’s like a temp agency for nursing, and the best part is that agency nurses with specialized training and experience are in high demand. Travel nurses are a type of agency nurse and can choose which locations they are willing to travel to, and have assignments of 13 weeks or longer with paid housing.

Critical Care: Critical care nurses work with patients and families who are suffering from potentially life-threatening illnesses. Critical care nurses work in cardiac care, intensive care, and surgical intensive care. It’s an intense job, but very rewarding.

Forensic Nursing: If you had trouble deciding whether to pursue forensics or nursing, this job combines the two. As a forensic nurse, your job is to give medical care to crime victims and collect physical and biological evidence, or provide medical care to prisoners.

Geriatric Nursing: With the increasing age of the baby-boomer generation, no professional field is set to grow as much as geriatric nursing. If you want a guaranteed job, this is the career to pursue. Nurses care for elderly patients in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, hospitals or in the patients’ homes.

Midwifery: Even though it sounds like a medieval practice (it is), midwifery is alive and well. Nurses specialize in childbirth, prenatal and postpartum care, doing everything from advising mothers-to-be on nutrition to delivering babies.

Nurse practitioner: Nurse practitioners have gotten their masters degrees and are able to prescribe medicines, give examinations, counsel patients and interpret diagnostic and laboratory tests. It takes longer to become a nurse practitioner, but the pay is better.